Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Everything's Better With Glitter



My friend/former student Urna returned to Mongolia yesterday! She graduated with a bachelor's in business from the University of Liverpool and is now back home. I'm so proud of all her accomplishments, and I'm delighted that she's back to contribute her intelligence and energy to Mongolia. Above is a photo of me (on left), our friend Bayara (middle) and Urna (right) at the Ikh Mongol, a popular restaurant/brewery that is currently celebrating Oktoberfest! We also celebrated Urna's return with flowers and chocolate cake on Tuesday night.

A funny anecdote about buying the flowers shown above. On several occasions I have noticed a shop near our house that sells fresh flowers. Fresh flowers are a relative rarity here. But I decided to buy a small bouquet of roses (okay, three, they're kind of expensive) for Urna. The shop sells each element of the bouquet separately, so I picked out three orange roses, some babies' breath, a piece of paper in which to wrap them, and a ribbon. The shopkeeper then asked me if I wanted something else, but I couldn't understand what she was saying (my Mongolian vocabulary really has never been used for flower-arranging purposes before!) so she said, "Do you want me to make it more beautiful?" I said, "Okay, sure," thinking that maybe she would add another ribbon or something. All of a sudden she pulled out a little bottle of silver glitter and sprinkled it all over the roses! Now, those of you who know my penchant for all things sparkly will understand that this was an excellent surprise, but it's no wonder I didn't understand the question-- she was asking me if I wanted her to glitter the bouquet!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Rach! How are you? I miss you! My dad and I both love reading your blog. It sounds like all is well and glittery :) Things here are ok- the countdown to baby has begun. Last night I helped my friend Bridget through labor over the phone. She had a big, healthy baby boy. I wish I was her right now!

Take care & keep in touch-
Cheers!
Andrea

Ashish said...

Hmmm... you have interesting friends... ;-)

Didn't know you could get roses there. Do they grow them there? Uhh, naive question. My images of Mongolia are of windswept expanses of the Gobi desert.

Jules said...

Lol, I am glad that you were able to talk eventually. I am sure the glitter made it more beautiful. I missed your blog while I was on vacation. I enjoy the pictures!